I have enough people stalking me, mostly bill collectors and that guy selling his homemade rap CD in the MapCo parking lot, but still. I refuse to feel guilty for not placating a clingy, needy social network prompt.

Last week, Facebook changed its status prompt from a rather generic “What’s on your mind?” to a randomly appearing series of personalized prompts such as “How’s it going, Kelly?” or “How are you feeling, Kelly?” and “What are you wearing, Kelly?”

OK, so I made that last one up. But the other new prompts, which so far are only seen by some users, are just as creepy.

On my wall, I have also seen: “What’s happening, Kelly?” and “What’s going on, Kelly?” which seemed redundant but who am I to judge an unseen entity that is asking me to share my feelings with it?

Every time I log on to my Facebook page, I feel as if HAL 9000 from “2001: A Space Odyssey” is watching me. I hear the prompts in HAL’s eerie electronic-slash-borderline-sex-fiend voice and expect it to ask at any moment: “Good evening, Kelly. You don’t mind talking about it, do you, Kelly? I understand now, Kelly.”

While I don’t really have a problem with prompting – remember the good ol’ days when the prompt was your name and the word “is” and you were supposed to complete the sentence? – I’m not sure prompts serve a purpose anymore.

Do you really think your cousin in Georgia needs to be prompted to let the world know she was up all night with a baby spurting green diarrhea? No, she would gladly tell us anyway. Why? Because she doesn’t want to be the only one who is suffering. That’s why she gets really descriptive about the consistency and smell.

Plus, if you follow the prompts literally, you’d end up with some pretty boring posts.

I looked around the other day when I was prompted with “What’s happening, Kelly?” and here’s what was happening at my house: Izzy, the tornado-rescue cat, was vomiting on the carpet…again. A pile of laundry needed folding, which was really more of a “not happening.” Last but not least, my trusty sidedog Lucy, asleep on the sofa as she is about 19.2 hours a day, was whimpering and snuffling and twitching her hind leg like she was hooked up to a battery in high school science class.

Too bad she doesn’t have a Facebook page of her own so we could find out: “What’s going on, Lucy?”

It would have to be more interesting than those “guess what I had for dinner?” posts.

Later, I logged on to find the prompt: “How are you feeling, Kelly?” to which I wanted to respond: “Pretty much like always, Facebook: Hungry.” But that post would be confusing and, to be honest, counterproductive because I could be unwrapping my Hershey bar instead of typing.

Facebook needs to get more practical. Stop worrying about unnecessary status prompting and consider pro-active prompting. For instance, who wouldn’t benefit from a prompt after hitting the post button that says: “Are you sure you want to post that? Because, really, no one cares.”

And it could really help in the case of drunk posting (“Are you sure you want to post how much you loved that girl you met at the bar, the one who tore up your phone number and called you a loser?”), or vaguebooking, which is a phrase for people who write those really obscure posts designed to illicit our questions or sympathy, such as: “Why does this always happen to me?”

These posts are often followed with 12 responses asking, “What happened? Are you OK? Poor baby,” and Facebook could put an end to them with the simple prompt, “Because you are annoying,” which is the correct response.

If the Facebook peeps really want to tinker, they should rethink the whole “poke” button. The Facebook help page says poking is used to say hello to a friend but we all know it is used by stalkers and creeps who probably sound like HAL 9000.

I’m waiting for the day Facebook prompts with: “Who do you want to poke today, Kelly?”

And that’s just a little too personal, if you ask me.

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